What’s love got to do with it?
Pitching is a cold-blooded hard-nosed affair involving honing your beloved story down from 99+ pages to two sentences of practical prose designed to snare a buyer. Yes? There’s no place for emotion.
Well, no.
The first and most important job of a pitch is to tell the buyer why he (or she) should be interested. Or to put it another way, why an audience will rush to see the movie or turn on the TV.
And the first and most important thing that an audience wants is emotion.
Audiences want to laugh, cry, shriek with horror or cheer with pride as the underdog team wins the cup. Or whatever.
They want to be amazed, dazzled, intrigued or just puzzled, but whatever the emotion is, they want to be moved. The overall emotion will depend to a large extent on the genre.
And the first thing a listener wants to know from your pitch is the same thing. Your pitch had better contain some emotion, or you won’t get past first base.
Easy to say, not so easy to do. It takes practice, training, good experienced feedback and yet more training. Get out there and start now.
Tell people what you think